David Shaltiel

David Shaltiel was born in 1903 in Hamburg

David Shaltiel was born in 1903 in Hamburg, Germany, to Helene Wormser and Benjamin Shaltiel. His family was of Portuguese Jewish descent. As a youth he joined the Zionist movement Blau Weiss.

He studied agriculture and moved to the Land of Israel in 1923, where he worked as a farm laborer. He later served in the French Foreign Legion and fought in North Africa. In 1936 the Gestapo caught him while he was buying arms for the Haganah, and he was held in Dachau and Buchenwald.

Back in the Land of Israel, he led Haganah intelligence bodies and in 1942 became Haganah commander in Haifa. From 1945 to 1948 he commanded the Jerusalem district, and in 1948 he led the Etzioni Brigade in the battle for Jerusalem. He negotiated with Arab Legion commander Abdullah el Tell and signed a cease-fire with him in July 1948.

After the war he founded the army's Border Corps and was its first commander. He then served as military attaché in France from 1950 to 1952, and as Israel's envoy to several countries in Latin America. From 1963 to 1966 he was ambassador to the Netherlands. He died in Jerusalem in 1969.